Meta staff warned that parents used paid subscription options on Facebook and Instagram to exploit their children to suspected pedophiles — concerns dismissed by the company, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The report details how two Meta teams apparently expressed concern that hundreds of ​​”parent-managed minor accounts” used the subscription feature to sell exclusive content of their children to adults.
The alleged content did not involve nude or illegal photos but included suggestive content of young girls in bikinis and leotards. These photos were sent to mostly male adults, some of whom openly post about their sexual attractions to children.
Meta launched a subscription model on its platforms last year to allow accounts to monetize their content. Accounts of minors are not allowed to participate in the model, but adults who run or co-manage a child’s account can do so.Â
Sarah Adams, a Canadian mother and social-media activist, detailed last year how Instagram accounts of child models managed by adults would sell bikini photos of teen and tween girls to users who had openly pedophilic interests, WSJ reported.
Meta reviews apparently showed its recommendation features suggested these child modeling accounts to likely pedophiles on their platforms. Not all of these parent-managed accounts catered to pedophiles, but many admitted they overlooked inappropriate motives to chase profits, per WSJ.
Meta employees reportedly recommended the company ban child model accounts from the subscription option like other platforms such as TikTok and Patreon. Executives rejected the request and has instead focused on fixing algorithms that suggest child accounts to likely pedophiles. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, said this plan is “part of our ongoing safety work.”
“We launched creator monetization tools with a robust set of safety measures and multiple checks on both creators and their content,” Stone told the WSJ.
A further review by the WSJ revealed that accounts banned on Meta for child exploitation were apparently successfully re-created under new account names with the same content that gained hundreds of thousands of followers. The review further found that two parent-run accounts promoted pinup-style photos of children to a 200,000-follower Facebook page focused on adult-sex content and pregnancy fetishization. Meta took down those accounts after it was notified about them by the WSJ.
Men on this Facebook page would often discuss ways to convince parents to sell more sexual photos of their children, the WSJ reported, and some even discussed how to track down where the children live.
“I swear I need to find her somehow,” one user wrote of a 14-year-old he described a sexual fantasy with, according to the report.
The story marks the latest in the WSJ’s inquest into Meta’s struggles to counter growing pedophile networks on its social platforms, as covered by The Dallas Express.
This included an investigation detailing how Instagram emerged as a preferred social media platform for pedophiles to connect and share illegal content of children. Another story showed how the “Reels” feature on Instagram, which automatically displays quick videos in succession, suggests adult videos and risqué content of children to accounts that “follow only young gymnasts, cheerleaders and other teen and preteen influencers.”
Meta faces a lawsuit from the New Mexico attorney general’s office over allegations of child exploitation, as reported by The Dallas Express.
